Microsoft changed their Windows Update policy for both Windows 7 and Windows 8: In October 2016, both W7 and W8 will no longer receive individual updates, so users have to decide whether they want to manually download a single update that contains security-only updates from a Microsoft support website or download a single rollup that contains all security and non-security updates sent to them via windows update.
I haven't decided yet. I will begin with Security Monthly Quality Rollup until they include something I don't want. Then I will move to Security only Quality update and if they break that too I will just disable updates.
Can you do that? Do you anticipate no problems uninstalling the rollups (in reverse), one at a time or would you go back to an image backup prior to the first rollup and start from there? Or just start with security-only right after the one that made you change your mind?
I wouldn't trust uninstall, I would restore system image taken before updating. I also test install them in virtual machine and use Autoruns comparison to see what was changed or added during update. If something fishy will be added to rollup I will just move to security only updates.
I'm a bit confused. Can you get the monthly security roll-up for W7 via WU? I thought those roll-ups were for enterprise only. I only was offered the quality monthly security roll-up for my system. * Edit : My bad. I now see it's the .msu file you can download from MS servers. I hunch is, it's only matter of time before they pull the plug on this option too. So eventually everybody has to go the quality-monthly-rollup route.
I chose "I no longer update windows." That's only partly true, however. I do update windows, just not on a daily basis like MS wants me to. I may go as long as 6 months or a year without updates. And definitely not on an automatic schedule. I may do a spot update, or a full rollup. Depends on my mood and if there are any potato chips around. I've gotten caught too many times when I wanted to shutdown now. And not a half-hour later. I got caught too many times having an application break or have some aspect of it or the OS change behavior in way I prefer it didn't. I'm not an "old man get off my lawn" type. Nor am I a control freak watching every byte of disk space and compulsively organizing everything. I dunno.. Windows simply seems to work better when not mucked with on a daily basis.. Besides, a full manually controlled update process allows me to make backups so I can go back to yesterday if something breaks. And it also helps to delay updating, too, let the rest of the world beta-test just for me!
I decided to switch to Security Monthly Quality Rollup. After installing April updates I disabled Diagtrack service.
* I {no longer="never"} update Windows OTOH, Service Packs can be very useful, and I thoroughly recommend them. But M$ has become very technical and confusing... I probably don't deserve to have a wonderful OS like Win7, do I